Miracle Enough
by batboyofficial
Summary: Edgar miraculously survives. He and Shelley have found peace. Everything is wonderful and nothing hurts. Mostly fluff.


There was the barest twitching of a foot thrust out from under the covers, a soft sigh, a half-formed snore. (Although, of course, if you asked Edgar, he would insist Shelley never snored – she simply breathed very deeply, and sometimes, you know, deep breaths can be quite loud.) As always, the curtains were drawn in the tiny bedroom, and in the dimness, it was difficult to see anything but the white bedspread, rumpled and bunched over what was either two very intertwined people, or one very lumpy mound of pillows.

Edgar often found himself awake at night and therefore very groggy in the mornings, lying abed while Shelley got up to start her day. He maintained it wasn't because he was tired, but rather because she spent so long getting ready in the morning that he was far better out of her way, lest he slow her down more. It wasn't often that he was awake before her alarm shrilled – yet here he was, propping himself up on one elbow and gently smoothing hair away from her face and back behind her ears.

"Mm?" Shelley opened one eye, glanced at her alarm, and furrowed her brow in mock annoyance. "You're up before noon. Something is wrong. What have you done, bat boy?"

"I promise, I'm innocent," Edgar protested in a soft whisper.

"Then what's the deal?"

"I just want to look at you." He lowered his head to kiss her forehead, and she pulled him down to lay against her, kissing his lips with surprising passion for a woman who'd just been woken up by a bat staring at her.

Her hands stroked long lines down Edgar's back, the fingernails rasping gently against his skin and the bumps of the scars on his back. There were seven long, thin scars, neatly healed in straight lines and surrounded by a smattering of smaller lines: the remainders of seven deep stab wounds and perhaps a dozen shallower cuts. For years after the night of the revival, Edgar had frozen any time his back was touched. Often he'd had to suppress cries of revulsion and fear. Embraces had felt like torture to him; how could he relax into a hug when he dreaded the descent of a knife?

But Shelley had worked with him patiently, without a single hint of resentment or exasperation. It started with her ghosting her fingertips along his shoulders, his sides, his hips, until he could let his muscles unclench. Then she would inch her fingers closer towards his back proper. There were stretches of days where even getting near his back would make him jerk away and shut down.

Then there came a day where Shelley could lay her palm flat on his back, and he simply looked up at her with those big eyes, full of love and sweetness and trust, and they both knew they'd crossed a threshold.

These days, Edgar often fell asleep with his back against Shelley's chest, her arm draped over his waist and her nose buried in his hair. He felt safest when she was pressed against the part of him he felt was most vulnerable, and she cherished the long moments after they turned out the light, feeling the motion of the muscles in his back and the rise and fall of his ribs as he breathed. Sometimes she would pepper his neck and shoulders with kisses, and he would make a soft chuckling noise deep in his throat and wriggle back against her.

Shelley herself was not without her share of scars. She suffered horrible nightmares, and both of them occasionally needed reminders that they were there, in the present, in each other's arms, not back in Hope Falls watching Dr. Parker wielding a knife or Mrs Parker bleeding out, desperately reaching her arms out towards her son. They would chant the date at each other like a mantra, fingers fumbling to touch faces, seeking reminders of the present, of safety, of home. They listed sounds, smells, textures, the colors they could see, the mundane facts of their everyday life together. Sometimes these weren't enough to keep Shelley grounded and Edgar would simply wrap his arms around her and let her cry into his shoulder. Sometimes there was nothing more anyone could do.

Edgar had barely survived that night. Shelley was haunted by the thought that he might not have made it, and she might have been working through this alone.

There had been endless discussions between them while Edgar was in the hospital – what are we now? How do we move forward? A tentative agreement to forget the night shared in the wood, the kisses they'd exchanged, the sensation of his hands on her body.

The utter destruction of that agreement when, one day, Edgar turned his head towards Shelley to tell her something, and she leaned forward and kissed his lips desperately, unable to hold back anymore.

Their life together was shameful, in those early days, and they both carried unimaginable guilt over the knowledge of what they were doing – until Edgar confessed one day that he really didn't understand the big deal, that bats certainly didn't hold the same moral views of boundaries between siblings, and how could they have known before falling in love, really, and also they were genetically different enough for it not really to matter in any significant way, so why –

And that was when Shelley really kissed him, without any reservation, for the first time since the woods.

They moved away from Hope Falls. They got married quietly, with no fuss and minimal announcement. Edgar considered getting his ears surgically altered, discarding the idea when he remembered sharp blades would have been involved. They found a small apartment. Shelley took out student loans and became a veterinary technician; Edgar designed and sold clothing.

They took tiny steps together. Neither of them had ever known what it was like to have a sibling, and so, although they shared a laugh and a nose, it was easy to forget they were twins. When Edgar looked at Shelley now, he saw his wife. When he looked into her eyes, so like their mother's, he didn't see Mrs Parker's judgment.

And every morning they woke up together, tangled, disheveled, and as hopelessly in love as they had been since Edgar first said Shelley's name clearly.

It was not perfection. There could be no such thing, especially with the both of them so hurt and scarred. They were poor, paying back student loans, struggling to pay for therapy and still keep themselves afloat. Edgar's diet was hard to satisfy and attempts to get him onto solid food had proved disastrous. They were exhausted and some days they had so little energy they hardly spoke two words to each other.

But Shelley never fell asleep without cuddling up to Edgar and kissing his ear. Edgar never forgot to tell his wife he loved her when she rushed out the door in the mornings. Their bodies fit perfectly against each other when they slept. The barest hint of a kiss was sometimes enough to stave off panic, or stop an argument.

It wasn't perfect. Edgar had long resigned himself to the knowledge that they never would be. But here, in the warm circle of Shelley's arms, his lips still tingling from her last kiss, he couldn't help but think that this was miracle enough.


End file.
